Hope is a Thing with Feathers

My little brother, after reading my old blog entries, asked me if I ever wrote anything happy. So the moon thing was for him really. But I also have this Benrik diary, which is a bit of a giggle, and remembered that on Friday it instructed me to learn a poem by heart - something I haven't done since school. It was really lovely - I mean the act of learning the poem, rather than the poem itself. So anyway- here it is - written by Emily Dickinson, and memorised by me:

Hope is a thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings a tune without words
And never stops at all.

And sweetest, in the gale, is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That keeps so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilliest land,
And on the strangest sea,
Yet never, in extremity
It ask a crumb of me.